Any reason I can't use a carboy as a bottling bucket?

[ChrisS]

LHBS is closed till saturday and I would like to bottle a beer I have before then. I don't have a bucket for bottling after having thrown out a bucket that I think was nasty. I do however have an empty carboy. Can I just add the priming sugar solution to the bottom of the carboy and transfer the wort from the secondary to the bottling carboy and go forth as normal?

Is there an advatage to using gravity via the spigot in a bottling bucket than to use an auto siphon in another vessel?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Yooper]

No, you can do that. It's just easier to use the bottling bucket, instead of the siphon. But it does work, and I've done it!

 

[bradsul]

I've done it too, no worries. My 'bottling bucket' when I first started didn't even have a spigot so I started with the auto-syphon method. Just make sure you thoroughly cool your priming solution before you add it to the carboy so you don't break it.

 

[ChrisS]

yeah my bucket was a fermenter actually so I used AS all the time. I was just wondering if there was any real scientific reason to use the spigot.

 

[bradsul]

Nope, all laziness and efficiency!

 

[max4677]

I go from carboy straight to bottle or keg all the time now. I use my bottleing bucket to store my chiller.

Do yourself a favor and get something like this though:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/bottling.html

Look at the Bottle Fillers near the bottom.

I use a generic gravity one instead of spring loaded. Makes bottling a lot faster, plus when using one of those you fill the bottle pretty much to the top and as you pull out the filler just enough headspace is formed because the filler displaced some volume in the bottle while you were filling it.